Its called Food Odessey (Turtle Soup) which by no means makes any sense to me. Anyway, its located opposite Sembawang Shopping Centre, behind the hawker centre there. Its one of those shops in the row of shophouses.

This is the infamous turtle soup! I know you can’t see any meat or anything, but there are loads of turtle meat inside, and various parts of it.

If you’re curious how turtle meat actually tastes like, i’ll have to say that it tastes like chicken or the likes of it. Nothing exceptional.

But the soup is really think and I think really good for blood circulation and everything. So drink more more more of the soup!

They serve other dishes of which we picked a few. This is eh.. pig liver in black sauce or something to that extent. Its not bad, the pig liver is done well, not too overcooked which makes it chewy.

Deep fried tofu which was pretty well done but I think the taste got abit grotesque by the 2nd or 3rd piece because it isn’t crispy enough and the oil starts to seep out making it really like soggy tofu. But the inside of the tofu is mixed with like carrot strips and stuff so it makes for an interesting tofu-ish but not really exactly tofu taste.

If you catch my drift.

And lastly…

The ngoh hiong which was like insanely well done. Fried to crispy perfection and of course I love the sweet sauce that they give and you just dip in and enjoy every single bit of it.

I really think you should eat ngoh hiong with sweet sauce, otherwise the taste would be insanely incomplete. I’m a sucker for the sweet stuff, so that could be why.

But if you go, you have have to eat the TURTLE SOUP and the NGOH HIONG which are really good. Maybe if you’re feeling gutsy enough, you can even go for the turtle eggs.

Ending off with something my parents caught sight of at our lift landing..

A gigantic moth!! I once saw one as huge in my school. Moths are said to be extremely lucky creatures, so if a moth flies onto you, into your flat blah blah blah it means really good luck is coming your way. And because this is insanely huge, i’ll have to say INSANELY good luck is coming the way of the people living in my block.

I’m just going to go into abit of rant mode before I end off so you don’t really have to read it. HAHA.

Sometimes you make choices different from others, and you see people reveling in their choices and thinking if that person could’ve been you.

You see, the problem with human beings is we always think of the could’ve would’ve and all the ifs. When we could have made those ifs happen but for practical reasons (or so we like to tell ourselves), these ifs forever remain a distant dream.

So when I read about the alternate universe theory, which is this crazy wanked up theory that for every decision that you make, there lies an alternate universe where the decision that you didn’t make exists.

Like if I decided I want breakfast this morning, there lies this alternate universe where I didn’t have breakfast. Pretty bad analogy, but then its the easiest way for people to catch the idea of the theory.

I like to think to myself that for all the wrong decisions and for all the could’ve would’ve and ifs in my life, there is an alternate universe, where another me is living those ifs, those could’ve and would’ve.

And insane as it sounds, it makes me just that bit happier. Knowing that at least some of my dreams could be fufilled in an insane way.

Not that I don’t love my life. I do, but then its always the what ifs. ARGH, I’M RANTING TO NO END.

This is the $4 prawn mee. Obviously the quantity of ingredients they give is much lesser than years before. They only give one piece of meat now! HAHA.

This is the $5 prawn mee! The meat given is also one piece but a bigger piece with lots of soft cartridge.

BUT!

The main ingredient of the prawn mee is the PRAWN and the SOUP. Those two are the main characters.

The prawn is still as fresh as yesteryears and the soup is abit more bland compared to the past and abit salty for my taste. But daddy was perspiring just from eating it so I guess its still almost as good as the past.

The soup stock having been boiled for hours with tons of prawn heads has the sweetness of the prawn and coupled with some seasoning, makes for a really good soup.

Its worth a try and if you’re really a crazy prawn mee fan, you can even try the $8 prawn mee. If you do, you MUST let me see the picture of it. I wonder how many pieces of meat do you get… HAHA.

I went for the trusty and old brand carrot cake that has been there for ages and passed down through the generations. They have an outlet at peoples park, but this store at great world is manned by the father whiles the other manned by the child.

So comparatively, its supposed to be better.

You see the old man frying each plate slowly and with concentration, as though just by using all that bit of concentration he could make the carrot cake taste that much better.

He never hurries, so if you’re an impatient soul you might want to eat other stores.

I have to say that the carrot cake was abit disappointing because the taste was quite like that of other carrot cake stores. It wasn’t fried so crispy and it was abit too oily for my liking.

HOWEVER, I have to add that the carrot cake is one of the softest I have ever tasted and it doesn’t taste like those machine made carrot cake where it gets really hard. And even though the carrot cake is so sinfully soft in your mouth, he doesn’t break them into a billion pieces though he seems to fry them haphazardly.

So I guess it is pretty worth to eat it. Its $3.50 for a plate which is relatively more expensive and the quantity is not as much as desired. But just paying for the skill of the old man and his years filled of experience, I guess its worth a try if you’re in the area.

Other dishes you can try is the kuay teow which has an insanely long queue during lunch time since donkey years ago and the queue is still as long. And also the fish soup. Basically the shops with the long queues have pretty good food. Typical singaporean mentality.

After that, we walked around great world city and I saw this gorgeous pair of boot like shoes in Zara and its about $89.90? But the cutting didn’t fit me and its mighty expensive for someone my age no?

Started trying on the caps at Espirit and I really LOVE this style of hats, its really chic and cool to me. Its $29.90. But I didn’t buy it because I NEVER wear caps. I should consider starting to wear them because they look realyl stylish. Ah well.

Ending off this post, with a picture of me!!

I really need to dye my hair again, it looks BLACK. hahaa. And I got my awesome shirt from bugis for $10! Long tees are my obsession recently!

This is the shop that we visited, its at the 2nd floor near the escalator going up and down to the third floor.

Strawberry Snow Ice

Mango and Strawberry Snow Ice

Tried the 2 different snow ices. They also have mango snow ice and green tea snow ice as well.

The serving is definitely too much for 1! More like for 2 to 3 people to share! The snow ice is really pretty, different from a typical ice kachang!

Because of how the ice is shredded, you feel like the ice melts in your mouth when you eat it. The strawberry is very sweet and the mango is also very thick. So you get very a mouthful of flavours when you eat this! Worth paying SG$4.50 for it!

Mango Sago

Mango Sago

The mango sago wasn’t nice! The mango wasn’t smooth enough, so you tasted the fibres of the mango when eating it. That isn’t a sign of a very good mango sago!

And if you eat the snow ice first, you find that the mango sago isn’t sweet enough! So if you want to order this, you really have to eat it alone or you’ll find it extremely not sweet!

But I wouldn’t recommend you to order this. I’d rather you order the snow ice! (:

Now for the hot dessert!

Was very tempted to order the beancurd cause it was served in a very cute container and everyone around us was ordering it! So we did!

The VERY KAWAII (CUTEEEE) beancurd container and the sweet syrup that comes with it!

Beancurd

The beancurd was EXCELLENT to say the least. It was very smooth, signs of a good beancurd. And yea, what else can I say. Smooth beancurd is very hard to acheive!

Plus it comes in this really extremely cute container and antique bowls that reminds you of eating beancurd in the past!

This is by far the best beancurd I have had and I recommend you all to buy it! Its abit pricey though. I forgot the price… HAHA.

Siew Mai

Lastly had their siew mai which was quite good! You can very obviously see the prawn protruding from the siew mai! And this is the really authentic siew mai not the pork one. So yea, its really nice to eat!

Very delish, and i’m super tempted to eat it again now! HAHA.

So yea, check out this place if you have the time!

First stop was Hougang Hawker Centre!

We had the following three dishes from the same store. Its the store close to a dessert store, its not the front row of shops, but the ones behind.

Yes, I know I sound really confusing but I don’t know how else to describe the stall! haha.

I swear I have to start taking photos of the shopfront!

Carrot Cake

The carrot cake was according to my mummy really nice! To me it tasted ok, pretty average. The chilli wasn’t nice enough.

But the carrot cake was fried pretty well! Worth a try if you don’t really know what you want to eat.

Oyster omelette

The oyster omelette was nice! Nicer then the amk hawker centre one.

They gave more oyster here, bigger, fresher. And the chilli wasn’t as limey so it was nicer to eat. It was fried pretty well and tasted nice!

I swear we’re oyster omelette freaks!

Hokkien Mee

The hokkien mee wasn’t to my mummy’s liking but I actually liked it. It was soupy enough, such that it wasn’t so dry or starchy that I would choke on it.

Similarly, the chilli was passe and not really nice.

Had desserts after this! I really don’t know how to describe the location of the stall but few stores down is the carrot cake store and this dessert store is the cornermost shop!

Tao suan

Tao suan was pretty nice. Because its been cooking since the morning, the beans were nice and soft but still maintained its crunchiness.

Not overtly sweet and the taste was great.

Ah Bo Leng

Ah bo leng! We had the mix one, meaning 2 peanut filling and 2 sesame filling balls! Both of them were really nice. The filling was great. You bite into it and the filling just oozes out.

The peanut soup that goes with it also tasted wonderful.

Wouldn’t advise you to eat it if you have a sorethroat because it would definitely make it worse!

Conclusion: EAT HERE ONLY IF YOUR PASSING BY!

I would rather you go to the nearby hawker centre to eat the famous beef noodle! Cause the food is nice! Or try out the famous duck kway chap from this very hawker store! (:

Now we headed off to Joo Chiat only to realise there wasn’t much to eat!

Briyani

Briyani

So we decided to be lame and ate briyani from 2 different stores! It was really cheap!

SG$3.50 per plate! Which is really cheap for briyani and I guess the serving is just nice for one.

I would say the second store we ate at was better. When you climb up the stairs to the hawker centre, you see a very long queue for the briyani, this is not the one that I feel is better.

Head to the back where there is another briyani store with a slightly shorter queue! This one is better!

Though the one with the longer queue has a much fragrant smelling rice but the curry pales in comparasion to the 2nd store!

All in all though, both stores briyani wasn’t that great!

If you are there, however, near the store at the back, there is a store selling alot of kuehs! And the kuehs there are not bad. So its worth a try and you find more of the uncommon kuehs there as well because its a malay village!

So check out the kueh stores if you are in the area k! (:

And we finally got around to buying them!

Princess Cake

Princess Cake

Princess Cake

OMG, this cake SUCKED BIG TIME!

NEVER BUY THIS FROM IKEA!! LIKE SERIOUSLY!

We had such high hopes for this cake because it looks seriously extremely pretty and nice. And this is like a traditional dessert from Sweden supposedly served at Swedish celebrations. So obviously, we thought we were in for a sweet treat!

Its description was also very attractive. I can’t remember the description but I rememberd tha it was attractive. Plus its topping of lime green marzipan is really attractive!

But the taste is YUCKS!

Absolutely horrible. The marzipan was too sweet for me and the whole cake just didn’t work out for me.

Ewwww, I couldn’t even finish one slice of the cake.

If you really want to eat a cake from ikea, this is worth a try…

Almond Cake

The almond cake from ikea is pretty nice!

Though the appearance isn’t as attractive as the princess cake, it makes up for it in terms of taste!

It is pretty nutty but there isn’t enough creamy topping for me.The topping is very milky and it just blends very well for the cake.

I loved every bit about it! It was crunchy enough, flavourfu enough and a gabillion times better than the princess cake!!

So if you really must have cake from ikea, try this one out instead!

If you visit Taiwan, you might want to consider picking up this snack:

Its called TAI YANG BING! And the taste is as attractive as the packaging!

When you open the packaging, you can smell the really milky flavour wafting through the air. And taking a bite into it, you can taste the milky flavours and upon tasting the honey filling in the centre, you practically melt!

Thats how delish it is! I really love taiwan snacks cause the packaging is always awesome and the taste is also extremely good!

If you’re looking for a quick lunch fix , I would recommend…

Kraft Mac and Cheese

This is how is looks like after its done:

Its very simple to prepare, you just need butter, milk and the macaroni and cheese mix is given in the packaging!

I cooked the macaroni about 10 minutes, though the packaging said 6-8 but it wasn’t soft enough for me. And I just mixed in the ingredients!

The mac and cheese is cheesy enough. Kraft cheese is always extremely nice and you can taste how great their cheese is in this concoction!

Of coure, I would prefer the cheese to be more cheesy, so I’ll be trying their four cheese next time which should be more cheesy!

But its a really great food to cook if you’re in the rush and you love macaroni like me! (:

Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger

Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger

According to the website,this is how they described the burger: “Two Charbroiled All-Beef Patties, Two Strips of Bacon, Two Slices of Melted American Cheese, Crispy Onion Rings and Tangy BBQ Sauce on a Toasted Sesame Seed Bun.”

And though the burger we bought was rather cold when we reached home and kind of soggy, I have to admit that the onion rings still maintained its crunchiness!

And this is probably the best burger from their range!

When you bite into the burger, you don’t just taste the beef patties, but also the bacon’s crisp in your mouth. Coupled with the crispy onion rings and the cheese melting in your mouth, I have to say this is the best burger hands down.

You just keep taking one bite after another with this burger!

It has the most ingredients and all of their ingredients combined together really makes for an awesome burger. Eating there would be even more enjoyable with their free flow of drinks. (:

I really can’t remember the name of this burger! But judging from the looks I’ll say it comes with one beef patty, bacon, onion rings, cheese and sesame seed bun. (:

Comparing just the ingredients of this burger with the double western, the double western wins hands down with two patties.

And comparing taste, I would say that the taste is similar but when you hold the double western burger in your hands, you feel like your getting your money’s worth I guess.

So yea, taste may be siimilar but the double western gives you a more your-indulging-in-sinful-food feeling in comparasion.

Superstar with Cheese

Superstar with Cheese

Described in the website as “Two Charbroiled All-Beef Patties, Two Slices of American Cheese, Lettuce, Two Slices of Tomato, Sliced Onions, Dill Pickles, Special Sauce, and Mayonnaise on a Toasted Sesame Seed Bun.”

Again, it pales in comparasion to the double western!

Because of the lack of onion rings, this burger lacked in the crunchiness. Though there were pickles, but it still couldn’t attain the sort of crunchiness the double western had.

The combination of the ingredients were good but the double western was simply better!

All in all, EAT THE DOUBLE WESTERN BURGER FROM CARL’S JUNIOR!

And you should definitely eat the beef burgers from there and not the chicken ones cause the size really pales in comparasion. Trust me!

frappunccino

DON’T BUY THIS!

The frappuccino doesn’t taste like frappuccino but more like ordinary coffee even I could boil for you! And its really not a good representation of starbucks coffee!

For the price you’re paying for this, you might as well save the money and buy yourself a good cup of coffee from starbucks!

At least there you can smell the aroma of the coffee and you feel like you’re really getting good quality coffee.

Not this poopy frappuccino that sucked.

Decided to visit the official branch under Astons because I thought the serving was pretty huge and the food was good.

We went to the one at Sembawang Shopping Centre!

Menu

The variety of food there is quite ok. Mainly chicken fish or steak I guess.

We went there twice and I’ll post all that we ate there in here.

Char Grilled Chicken with fries and mashed potatoes as side

For the sides, you have a variety of choices, fries, onion rings, mashed potatoes, baked potato, salads etc. I would say the best sides are mashed potatoes and fries definitely. (:

The char grilled chicken is nice! The chicken itself doesn’t have much flavour, its mainly the mushroom sauce, which is also the sauce used on te mashed potatoes.

The fries have these chilli flakes scattered over them, which makes them really tasty.

Hickory BBQ chicken with baked potato and onion rings as sides

The bbq sauce didn’t have enough flavour to catch my attention. It as pretty plain and like the char grilled chicken, the chicken itself didn’t have much flavour. Mostly its the sauces that makes the dish work.

And the bbq sauce didn’t work for me in this case.

Also, Don’t try the baked potato!! They didn’t give bacon bits! Which is what makes baked potato awesome. So the whole thing was dull and bleh. And the potato wasn’t baked long enough either.

Sirloin Steak Medium Rare with rice and onion rings

Medium rare is abit bloody but not completely. To me, its the best way to have your steak becaue that way its not very chewy and its just nice and tender. Of course, to each his own.

The sirloin steak was rocking good!!

It had flavour by itself even without the mushroom sauce so you can eat it plain or with the sauce. Either way, its really good!

Very flavourful and at the risk of sounding extremely cliche, it was cooked to perfection.

But the rice, omg the rice, was FREAKING HORRIBLE! Didn’t have any taste whatsoever and it really kind of sucked!

Never order the rice as your side!

This concludes the first time we visited the store. Now for the second time!

Sirloin steak with garden vegetable and onion rings

In order to test the consistency in the sirloin steak, we ordered it again!

And the conclusion is that the size of the sirloin steak is really the luck of the draw. The second time we went the steak is smaller and has more of the fats portion. The first time there was more meat definitely.

HOWEVER…

The steak was still cooked to perfection and it was still very pleasant to eat! (:

Prime Ribeye with mashed potatoes and fries

We tried the Prime Ribeye because we wanted to know the difference between this and the sirloin steak.

The tenderness of the ribeye is better!

Though both the sirloin and ribeye looks the same, the tenderness when you taste it is noticably different.

At first you thought the sirloin was tender, but when you had the ribeye, you realise, theres a whole new level of tenderness!

Teriyaki Chicken with fries and onion rings as sides

The teriyaki chicken was nothing to rave about after we had our sirloin steak and prime ribeye. The sauce didn’t taste like teriyaki sauce, in fact it tasted like the hickory bbq sauce only weaker.

So it wasn’t anything special.

And the bill.

Once again the CONCLUSION!

EAT THE PRIME RIBEYE OR THE STEAK SELECTION ONLY!

If you don’t mind paying abit more for more tender steak, then go for the prime ribeye which is really more tender.

And for the sides, if you’re not a veggie freak like me, I would strongly recommend you take the fries and mashed potatoes as the sides!! (:

All in all, Astons is a good place to hang when you wish to have some western food!

P.S: There is only a slight difference in pricing like $0.35 between the Astons branches and the one in the hawker centre at AMK. So I would recommend you to go to the actual Astons branch because there is aircon!

Portions and the taste is exactly the same. (:

This hawker centre is located directly opposite the Kbox Plaza. Kbox Plaza is at 4190 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 6. Its this big black building with Suki Sushi (Which rocks!) and long john silvers on the first floor.

Anyway, opposite it is this hawker centre that is said to be hiding great food!

Oyster Omelette

The oyster omelette tasted like the one from Maxwell Centre. Its not bad, the oysters are big. But the chilli was too limey! So it turned out pretty sour!

But its not bad. Worth a try if you like oyster omelettes!

Curry Beehoon

Curry Beehoon

The curry beehoon had quite a long queue so we expected it to be quite nice.

But our verdict was that it was average!

The curry was ok, in fact I can’t really remember the taste now. But they are quite generous with their ingredients I guess. So yea, quite ok. But I don’t think it would really tempt me to eat it again.

We also ate the famous carrot cake there! But I can’t find the picture anywhere!!

Anyway, so famous this carrot cake was that it SOLD OUT 5 minutes after we ordered at night.

And the carrot cake was good!! Nice but then not the best I’ve eaten definitely!

So once again to conclude…

EAT HERE ONLY IF YOUR PASSING BY!

No need to go down specially to have a meal here cause the food is pretty ordinary. And you can get these dishes pretty much everywhere. Maybe just give the carrot cake and omelette a try. The beehoon is … just average i guess. (:

Oh ya, if your inside AMK Hub, you might want to consider buying this..

Its really cute looking! The taste is ordinary but then it looks really cute right! You can buy one for your girlfriend or parents or something!

Its from the Bread for life store, its a pushcart store I think found in the basement level or something. Just look out for it!

So my parents and I went to dine at the branch in Bishan Junction 8 (Northpoint is opening one soon!)

Now the branch at bishan is quite small and the design rather odd because my parents and I couldn’t differentiate the front of the store and the back of the store. We ended up waiting at the back of the store but was redirected, walking directly through the store, to the front of the store. Sounds complicated?

Trust me, I was half lost in the process!

Because there weren’t seats available, unless we sat outside, my parents and I decided to wait.

Here is where I have to commend them on their SERVICE! While we stood there waiting, they served us free drinks in these mini plastic cups to ensure that we could sort of quench our thirst while waiting.

And this was greatly appreciated by us.

Anyway, we decided on our orders before entering!

We ordered the set meals which would come with a soup of the day and a drink (either peach tea, lemon tea or blah blah blah can’t remember)

Soup of the day!

I can’t remember the name of the soup but I expected it was one those mushroom soups that taste pretty much like Campbell. So I got a shock when I stirred the soup and found SOTONG!!

Though I’m not a big fan of sotong, I have to say that the soup already impressed me because it shows that they aren’t stingy with their ingredients. The sotong was not fresh enough though, kind of like those frozen seafood.

Another proof that they aren’t stingy in the slightest…

GIANT CUPS OF LEMON TEA!

Or peach tea or whatever drink you order! The cup is seriously huge, I mean just drinking that whole cup of drink and you would be full.

So anyway, our main courses arrived soon after!

Seafood Gumbo

Garlic Rice and Bread

For the seafood gumbo, you can choose either garlic rice or chips and we went for the garlic rice.

BEST DISH OF THE DAY! The only right decision we made that day actually!

It costs I think SG$11.90. And the sauce is really cheesy to me and tastes really good with the rice. It comes with prawn, squid, fish, carrots and brocolli!

The ingredients given are alot and I think the sauce really wins anyone over. Coupled with the really extremely fragrant rice, its really the best dish!

Manhattan Fish and Chips

Garlic, mayonaise and chilli sauce

The fish and chips were simple a disappointment! It tasted pretty much like the fish and chips from fish and co.

Which sucks.

I mean the batter is pretty average and the fish has this fishy taste which I hate. I know they use dory fish but then they can’t get rid of that really strong fishy taste.

Though the serving is really huge, in this case it worked against it. Being really huge, it was one big pain in the butt trying to finish the fish and chips.

But its quite cheap at SG$9.90. But it sucks.

Seafood linguine

Can’t really remember the name but I know it costs SG$14.90.

It was pretty average?

Its personally my first time eating linguine and so I have rather high expectations for it, expecting it to be really flavourful and all that.

But for this one, the taste was kind of flat. All of the ingredients were just lightly seasoned with pepper and sort of grilled. I only enjoyed the prawns which were really fresh. But then I enjoyed it because I love its natural flavour.

The portion of the food was good, very filling. But the taste of the food fell pretty flat. Eating the linguine after awhile was like eating plain porridge or something. The taste simply wasn’t exciting enough!

So in conclusion…

THE SEAFOOD GUMBO ROCKS!

Though it doesn’t come with soup of the day but its really the best! And the rice is overthetop nice!

So yea, I would recommend going to the fish mart but please don’t eat the fish and chips! It sucked! and don’t go to fish and co to eat the fish either!

Eat the seafood gumbo or the flaming prawns! It will rock your world! (:

I woke up to grey skies and a light drizzle. I waited and the skies were getting darker by the minute (ohhh…I was getting excited) and by 8.45am, it started pouring, then it got brighter and brighter. What no total darkness? Hey I thought, there is always the 9.45am one to catch. So I went about with my daily routine and when 9.45am came, still nothing, just rain and cloudy skies. I can’t imagine having dark cloudy skies ruin my experience of a lifetime. Neither did I get to see it or experience the “total Darkness’. Sigh…so much for the anticipated Solar Eclipse of the Twenty-First Century. I’m really bumped out, cause I definitely won’t be around for the next lengthy solar eclipse in 2132.

There are of cause lots of concern about the solar eclipse arising from superstitions.

In Thailand astrologers predicted the eclipse will bring misfortune to the country in the form of natural disasters and another coup.

This prompted a sudden surge of people flocking to amulet shops in doves to purchase charms that ward off bad luck and negative effects that the solar eclipse might have on them.

In India, astrologers predict a rise in volience and chaos particularly in India, China and other Southeast Asian Countries. Most prophecies are filled with bad luck and dread of one kind or another.

Pregnant women were advised to stay indoors to prevent their babies from developing birth defects caused by the sun’s invisible rays.

Obviously there is no need to get too alarmed, as the solar eclipse is a natural phenomenon.

Anywayyyy…

I realise I have only a thousand photos of food pics that i’m supposed to upload but am supposedly busy (lazy) to do so. So this post will be a mish-mash of food pictures, mostly of the food cooked at home. All of the dishes cooked at home are relatively simple and if you want the recipes, feel free to ask me for them. (:

Starting with 2 dishes eaten outside,

Fishball Noodles from Giant

Kway Chap from Kopitiam

Kway Chap from Kopitiam

Both weren’t fantastic at all, so I wouldn’t advice you to try them.

Moving on to some dishes cooked at home.

Starting with the easiest…

Chicken Bao

Nahhh, we didn’t wrap these bao ourselves, we got it from…

Lele Chicken Bao from NTUC

Bought it from NTUC and I would strongly recommend you NOT to buy it. The skin is hard as nails even after you steam it, worse if you leave it out.

The filling isn’t fantastic and xiao long bao is supposed to have some kind of soup inside it, but this one was very veryyyy dry. So don’t bother buying it!

But if you do decide to buy, please read the instructions…

It says DO NOT DEFROST! My mummy happily went to defrost it, causing it to become a huge lump of bao. Which means I had to eat a huge rock for breakfast. Not good.

Century Egg porridge

Relatively simple to cook porridge, just that you have to add enough water and leave the rice to boil till its nice and soft. But no matter what porridge you eat, I would recommend that you add…

SPRING ONION, PARSLEY AND GINGER! But add according to how much you love these ingredients. Food without condiments for me isn’t very nice at all. So yea.

And because I love to eat eggs with maggi mee, my mummy and I decided to try out how to do poached eggs as per Gordan Ramsey’s method.

The result?

It was rather successful, so if you want to try it, you can watch Gordan Ramsey’s video here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbAQgJF3d7E[/youtube]

You definitely have to ensure that your water ‘tornado’ is spinning fast enough and that its not bubbling. I tried this I think 2 or 3 times to acheive the results in the pictures. (:

MACARONI! One of my favourite dishes but the dish my mother hates to make because of the hard work. But my mummy’s macaroni is really the best, if she says she’s number 1 no one can beg to differ!

The soup is spicy enough because of the black pepper, it has a chicken infused taste to the soup plus the condiments and the finely shredded chicken. I’m not kidding, its the best macaroni in the world and I ain’t bragging.

In case your wondering how much work can it be, look at the amount of chicken we use to cook macaroni..

Thats how much chicken meat we have to shred!

Speaking of chicken,

My mothers latest creation, sort of a chicken herbal soup is also rather to my liking. I don’t like herbal stuff, like all the red dates and everything but eating this is really not bad at all. The only thing is that the soup is rather oily even if you remove the chicken skin.

So my mummy is currently finding ways to cut down the oil.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE FROG LEGS, PLEASE SCROLL UNTIL YOU SEE THE WORD SAFE!

Some of the basic ingredients to make black chilli sauce frog legs will be spring onion, ginger, dried chilli and a specially concocted sauce.

So you have your frog that comes with the body and of course the leg. You have to chop them up and you will get something like this..

All chopped up and ready to cook!

Some people hate frog legs and can’t understand why others can eat them but I guess its a large part of culture. Like if I told you some parts of Africa eat hamsters, you’ll go ew, but then again thats their culture.

Spring Onion Frog legs

Black chilli sauce Frog Legs

The recipe is not perfect but the frog legs were fresh and the meat was cooked till quite tender. You can buy fresh frog legs from Sheng Shiong Supermart, I would recommend you not to buy from giant because my dad found…

2 ROTTING FROG LEGS!

But maybe its because the weather in Singapore is freaking hot these days, like 34 degrees celsius hot. OMG. I can’t live without fan/aircon now.

SAFE!! The frog legs are over, you can read now!

And a fruit I’m not sure if all of you have seen before. Its called MANGOSTEEN! Its a decent purply colour and the inside looks gorgeously white.

It actually tastes like grape just without the seeds and the texture is abit different. Very sweet and very nice as a after dinner snack. (:

And i’m going to end my post with a sneak preview of whats coming.

This place is none other than…

There are many outlets but we went to the one at People’s Park, which is quite small and packed during lunch hour. For the details of that outlet and others just click here.

Here are the prices of the toast sets available there…

There are various other stuff that they sell there like buns and stuff like that. Anyway, we ordered SET B and an additional century egg porridge!

SET B (Toast, Coffee and Half Boiled Eggs)

The toast was not bad but I would have preferred if the auntie made it more crisp. I think she was in too much a rush so that bread wasn’t well toasted. But she was generous with the kaya and butter so it wasn’t that bad. The kaya tasted something like a homemade kaya toast, so its quite delicious!

The coffee was also very thick and well done. Just enough condensed milk so it wasn’t extremely sweet. VERYYYY DELICIOUS! haha. I like well brewed coffee and people who give just the right amount of condensed milk!

A tip when doing toast at home: Spread butter on the bread on both sides then toast it. The bread will turn out to be extra crisp. (:

Century Egg Porridge

The century egg porridge was quite ok. It was $1.50. And for such a cheap price, the porridge was rather thick. Though it was kind of plain but the quantity was alot and they were quite generous with the century egg.

I think the porridge is more for the older people, cause its more plain and cleansing. People who are used to very salty or strong flavoured stuff might find it plain. But I think its not bad and worth a try. (:

Anyway, I’m veryyyyyy bored, so I shall teach everyone the proper way to eat a half boiled egg! HAHA.

First you crack the egg into the plate then you see its like half cooked and watery watery one! (All signs of a very good half boiled egg!)

Add the desired amount of black sauce and pepper. Usually when you order half boiled egg it comes with black sauce and pepper. For porridge, it comes with soy sauce and pepper.

MIX IT UP!

Then happily slurp and consume it! Some people don’t like to break the egg yolk and just directly slurp the egg yolk!

Its like how some people like to crack a raw egg in milo and drink it down (which I find gross) because they say that it is highly nutritious! (or highly gross!)

I’ll just end off with the crowd sitting in front of the store on a lazy afternoon.

Omg, I think I’m totally running out of writing inspiration. I’m practically falling asleep typing my own entry. I think school bores me and I bore you. WONDERFUL….

Sembawang Shopping Centre was recently (ohkay, not that recently) renovated!! My parents and I used to go to the old one because they had FREE PARKING!

As with past practices, it was now having a SPECIAL PROMOTION!

Free parking from 12pm to 2pm from Mondays to Fridays!

Which is quite a good deal because you can shop there for 2 hours! And contrary to what I used to believe, there is very few people inside Sembawang Shopping Centre!! So you don’t have to squeeze like when you go to Orchard Road or Bugis Street.

I remember in the past when my daddy would drive by and there would be hoards of people’s car waiting to park their cars and we thought they all wanted to buy the $1.50 chicken from Giant! HAHAHA.

But its really quite a great place, I mean theres a few fashion shops there, Jean Yip which have some fantastic promotions because of the slow traffic, some fancy smansy bakery that sells buns at really ridiculous prices, MOF (which I heard serves brilliant food), DAISO (where you can get everything at 2 bucks!!) and GIANT!

Theres free shuttle bus services there from Yishun Mrt and various other Mrts as well so its quite ok for people who don’t drive! But I have to admit the shuttle buses are quite packed most of the time.

Its really quite empty and cold during weekdays though, so you can try popping in between 12pm and 2pm if your insanely free and pulling your hair out thinking where you can visit on this uberly small island.

We went to the Kopitiam there to eat. So here is what we ate and as usual my smashing comments. (:

Hokkien Mee

Rating: 1/5
Price: About $3.50 (can’t remember)

Not worth trying it out simply because its not well fried. Even though you would imagine they placed lots of chicken stock, the hokkien mee is extremely bland to the point of tasteless. They didn’t give alot of ingredients either, the usual prawn and sotong. The noodle was rather hard and it wasn’t like sticky wet hokkien mee, it was wet wet, like plain water instead of chicken broth that kind of wet. So I didn’t like it at all.

What was really odd was that they man fried the hokkien mee on the flat hot plate thing usually used to fry carrot cake. Which to me is really weird because I think hokkien mee fried in a WOK would be much more appropriate. But I don’t really know how to cook, I only know how to EAT! So i’ll leave it at that.

I would say eat this only if your extremely desperate for a hokkien mee fix, the way a smoker hankers after smoking that kind of desperate.

Lotus Leaf Rice

Lotus Leaf Rice

Rating: 0/5
Price: About $2.50

As far as worse lotus leaf rice goes, this takes the award. Very little meat inside the rice and the rice wasn’t sticky and didn’t have the fragrance of the lotus leaf. The rice was on the hard side. So its like eating a very hard chocolate ball only instead of receiving a gooey pile of chocolate melting on your mouth when you hit the centre, you reach a small serving of salty meat. Brilliant.

Saba Fish

Rating: 3.5/5
Price: $4

The saba fish was bought from the store selling fish soup and not from the Korean one because of PRICE. Price-wise, the saba fish from the fish soup store is quite the value for money. Comes with rice and a small serving of salad (if you can call it that).

I would recommend eating it from the fish stall to save yourself abit of money. Even though this saba fish doesn’t come in a hotplate and sizzling but in terms of taste, I have to say I think its on par of that of the Korean store. It comes with a sweet sauce dribbled rather generously over it and the fish is more meaty than bony (which is always a good thing).

If your in the mood for saba fish but you feel tight with money and can’t bear to spend $5.50 on the saba frish from the korean store, you can give this one a try. You might be pleasantly surprised after all. (:

XO seafood fried rice

Rating: 3.75/5
Price: $3.50

Another dish that I recommend you try. Very generous in terms of portion and very tasty as well. Comes with squid and prawn which is not bad. Frying fried rice with XO sauce is always the right way to go. They weren’t overtly generous with the XO sauce to the extent that you might choke on the overwhelming taste. It was just the right proportion of sauce to rice. I actually rather enjoyed it.

As with all fried rice, I think you must always eat green chilli with it. Without the green chilli, the rice might taste bland at times and the taste might be a little irritating and non stimulating to the tastebuds. But not a bad dish.

Toast Set

Toast with Kaya

Rating: 2.5/5
Price: $2

The reason why I gave this a rather ok rating is purely because you can’t go wrong with half boiled eggs and coffee. The coffee was thick and rather aromatic and with just enough milk such that it didn’t taste extremely sweet but just nice. The half boiled eggs were rather well cooked, but I would have prefered them to be more done. It was rather raw at the point of consumption. More like quarter boiled eggs.

The toast as you can see was quite ok. I have to commend the persons toasting skils because the bread was aptly crisp enough to allow you to have that nice crunchy biting sound when you bite into it. However, the person was extremely stingy on the kaya and butter which made the toast quite bland. It was like eating crunchy bread, which really defeats the point of it being Kaya toast when you can only taste the toast.

Century Egg Porridge

Rating: 2/5
Price: $3

The porridge was good because they give doughsticks (you tiao) which I really love in a porridge. However, the porridge was extremely plain and they didn’t give alot of century eggs. It wasn’t also very thick, but rather watery and I had to use alot of soya sauce so that I could actually taste something. For $3, the portion of porridge was ok but because it tasted so plain, i’d rather buy $3 worth of bottled water and drink it. Since it would taste the same anyway.

After much eating of century egg porridge, I have to conclude that dicing the century egg into the porridge is definitely much better than slices of century egg. Reason being century egg is extremely salty so eating it in slices actually makes your tongue feel rather uncomfortable! So yea, now I prefer them diced up!

Durian Ice Kachang

Price: $2

Always end a meal with dessert!! Especially because the weather is killer hot nowadays! I swear I just stand in my house for a minute with the fans off and I perspire buckets of sweat. If you could sell sweat, I think I would be a millionaire by now. Seriously, I don’t mind more of those Sumatra Squalls things where the wind is so strong that tree branches break. Perspiring in your own house is practically a sin.

So anyway, a nice cooling bowl of ice kachang never hurts.

Not really going to comment on the ice kachang and give it a rating, simply because all ice kachangs taste the same. I only have to say that the durian puree was thick and it was as generous as other stores. The only store I’ve seen given an extremely generous amount of durian on top was that of Ice monster, but those cost $5.50 a bowl.

So for the price you pay here, the durian is quite ok and the ice kachang tastes quite ok and the ingredients are as per all other stores. (Red bean, atapchi, chin chow)

And that ends the trip to Sembawang Shopping Centre! You should totally visit if your free!